Windows and wine

Holly and Sam came out for an extended Memorial Day weekend and we spent Saturday hitting our favorite wineries, visiting the house, and having dinner in Healdsburg. Our first stop was Rafanelli where we picked up the wine we had ordered previously. (Rafanelli is in the Dry Creek area of Sonoma county and they make a terrific zinfandel.) After a stop at a winery that proved to be disappointing, we went to Ridge which always has good wines. Problem is, although the wines are good, it is too popular a place and we left shortly after a bus showed up.

After picking up lunch at the Boonville General Store, we headed up to the house site. (Note to visitors: if you like pickles, you can't beat the ones at the general store. They make them themselves and they are a perfect mix of spicy and sweet.) Almost all the windows are in, the plumber has finished his rough in work, the electrical boxes have been set, the mason has finished the outside fireplace and the ventilation system is nearly complete.

I was worried that since the windows are so large, they would be difficult to open and close; I shouldn't have worried since even the largest can be moved with a couple fingers. No outside doors have been installed but that will be done soon.

View into the common areas with the windows installed.

Holly and Sam with the new windows.

Outside Rumford fireplace. (It will have a coat of plaster.)

Master bedroom windows.

This coming Wednesday, we are meeting with the electrician and architect to do a walk through prior to pulling the wires. The architect wants to do this since he says they always catch errors or find that some lights can be placed in better locations and it is far easier to make adjustments before the wires are pulled.

We made a decision early on not to air condition the house. Immediately after buying the land, I bought a fairly sophisticated weather station and recorded the conditions every 10 minutes for a full year. What we found was that you could usually set your watch by a breeze coming up at 3 PM every summer afternoon which then dies down around 6 PM. A little shade and a breeze provides just enough cooling to make the daytime heat comfortable. (There's also the pool.) Although days can be hot, nights are cool. There is also a whole house fan that should rapidly exhaust the hot air from the house once the outside cools off. My experience with whole house fans has been mixed. The one in the house I grew up in was kind of noisy but worked well. The one in the lake house sounds like a 747 landing on the roof and works poorly. My contractor felt that the right combination of fan and ducts would both work well and be quiet. The fan and duct work was installed this week and I'll be interested to see how well it works.

View up to the covered patio from below.

Pool area.

The fire sprinklers haven't been installed yet because the permits are taking a long time. It turns out that to install sprinklers multiple agencies must sign off on the design. Seems kind of backwards to me; they should make something that improves safety easy to get approved, not hard.

We've got sketches for the landscape hardscape (these are the constructed, non-plant items in the landscape). Since we've moved the pool and it basically sits on top of the ground at the low side, I've been worried that we wouldn't be able to make it look natural. Our house and landscape architects came up with an idea for a large retaining wall that would help it blend in. It's hard to describe so it will have to wait for a picture once it's built. There are a couple other hardscape items (like 2 large trellis walls to separate areas) that we hope to see plans for on Wednesday.

Sketch of pool retaining wall and large trellis. (Click on the picture for a larger view.)

After leaving the house site, we went to our favorite winery, Navarro. They make great wines that they sell at reasonable prices in addition to being very nice people. When Sam asked about shipping a bunch of wine he had bought (none was from Navarro), they gave him a padded shipping box for free.

We then headed down to Healdsburg for dinner at Dry Creek Kitchen. I first saw Healdsburg in 1973 when I canoed down the Russian River with my freshman dorm at Stanford. Back then, it was a sleepy little Sonoma county town; now it is all tarted up with galleries and junk shops. On the plus side, there are some good restaurants.

Dinner was great but the 1 hour drive home was hard.

The subs have started

Lots of progress over the last several weeks. Today was a big day at the house since we met with the architect and one of his associates, a landscape architect, and the electrician. Also, the crew had a Cinqo de Mayo bbq. At the peak, there were 14 cars parked at the site.

Wall separating the common areas from the rest of the house is now complete.

Hallway at the back of the common areas.

View out to the covered patio. Exterior sheet rock complete and Rumford fireplace construction about to start.

Pool area is now taking shape.

Now that the framing is complete, the subcontractors have started their work. Since we live in an area with high fire danger, we decided to add a layer of sheet rock to the outside. This is a code requirement for commercial buildings but isn't usually done on residences. (The material is not traditional sheet rock since it is rated for exposure to rain for several weeks; it looks more like cement board.) Like most sheet rockers, this crew works incredibly fast.

The roof has been "dried in" with a layer of waterproof material applied. This material is similar to the stuff used in the east to prevent ice dams from causing leaks. We are using it over the entire roof underneath the final steel layer. This results in basically a 2 roof system that is virtually leak proof.

You can see in the pictures that the house really sticks out now with the plywood covered with either sheetrock or the roofing material. Eventually, a bronze covered steel roof and darkened redwood siding will allow the house to blend in with the site much better.

View of the house from the far side of the land. It'll only be an eyesore until the roof and siding goes on.

The plumbers will finish their work next week then the fire sprinkler installers will do their work. Fire is a real concern in this area. In addition to the layer of sheetrock and sprinklers, we also have a steel roof and 5 fire hydrants fed by our 6000 gallons of stored water. (I've tried using a 2 1/2" fire hose with our hydrants and it was a challenge to control.) We'll have remotely monitored smoke detectors so the fire department will eventually show up. Hopefully, all they'll have to do is turn off the water to the sprinklers.

We went over the lighting plan for the house last week in anticipation of the electrician starting his work. We switched a couple more fixtures to fluorescent to be more energy efficient. A lot of the accent lights are low voltage and are more efficient than normal incandescent but not nearly as efficient as fluorescent. I have always been amazed at how expensive lights are; the simplest ones always seem to be the most expensive.

The plan for network, phone, audio, and video wiring is finally coming together. I found a structured wiring consultant and he has come up with a preliminary plan. It goes beyond what we need but it should be easy to prune. (I did the specification of where network and video connections were but there is a whole lot more detail that needed to be worked out.

The mechanical plan is also coming together. We decided a long time ago to use solar for heating the pool. Recently, we expanded the solar capacity to handle all the hot water needs of the house. (There will be a conventional water heater for backup.) There will also be a solar electric system but the plan for that is still in the early stages.

The first window delivery is next week. By the time we go up next Friday, there should already be a couple installed. Some are absolutely huge; I think it might be too nerve wracking to watch them being installed.

Susan has been looking for a landscape architect and we met with one at the house on Friday. He was recommended by our architect and they seemed to work well together. The goal is to have the landscaping completed at about the same time as the house. I'll post more about the landscaping after we decide on an architect and get some firm plans.